I’m off for a few days through the weekend, but plan to do a team-by-team look at how the Pac-10 race shapes up now that NBA defections and spring recruiting are complete. I’ll try to get that posted by early next week.

Rocko: You are correct.
Without a dominant inside team, the Bears are doomed to be overrated. Look, we all love Kamp and Boykins. But they are simply undersized. It’s not their fault. We’ll play with what we got. We’re just missing 1 player – a big tall dominant center. With Wilkes gone, we are smaller than last year. I don’t expect Bak Bak or Max to be anything significant in terms of interior strength. A wild card could be incoming JC transfer Sanders-Frison. He’s only 6’7″ and a wide (translation: earth bound) body, but perhaps he can help Kamp and Boykins in the rotation. We’re going to be thin at the 4 and 5 spot, and it is sad that Omondi Amoke will have to play out of position at the 4 again (as I’d personally like to see him develop as a big 3, rather than a small 4, same situation as Theo had). Surely, Monty will have to get Max some serious playing time in the preseason to see if he’s got any chance to perform in the Pac-10. Otherwise, we are just going to have to become a small run and gun team. The defensive half court set it going to be undersized and we’ll just have to have tons of movement, double-teaming and rotating to cover our weakness. If we get into foul trouble down low, yikes. That’s the first thing I would do as an opposing coach. Dump it down low and force some early fouls against Kamp and Boykins at the start of every game. What are we going to do if they go out. Harrison and Wilkes are gone. Thus, the JC wild card will be the key to this season. Never before has more pressure been on a JC recruit, no?